I ended up baking a couple sheet cakes and just sculpting the can instead of buying a handful of small cake pans that I would never use again. it was a lot of work and there were a lot of scraps but i made extra frosting so the scraps were happily eaten by my family and some co-workers. 😉

I didn’t end up getting and good pictures of the cake since I was in such a hurry to finish and the lighting at the bar was terrible but I did get one good photo of the birthday boy, Neil, demonstrating how he’d drink it if it were actually full of PBR. 🙂

Neil showing off the cake

Sadly the frosting ended up getting a bit melty and the cake acquired a few smudges due to everybody passing it around and gawking at it. By the time Neil got the cake home it had sank quite a bit as well and you could see the straws I used for supports starting to peek through the top. Oh well. it was fun to make and people seemed pretty impressed and amused so I’d do it again!

So this weekend I have one PBR can cake to make for my boyfriends birthday and two berry lemon cheesecakes to make for easter brunch and the grandparents’.

…and it’s already friday

…and I work until 9pm.

YUCK!

So the game plan is to bake and assemble the cake, dirty frost it, then give it a quick freeze to seal the crumb coat and drive that baby over to Rockabilly Mikes house where he will help me finish up and then, thankfully, store the cake until Saturday night. Saturday morning and evening will be filled with cheesecakes and putting any finishing touches on the PBR cake.

I’m going to be exhausted!

Hopefully I can get some good photos out of it all though as it should be pretty entertaining. Speaking of photos, I have some really great ones of my St. Patricks day cupcakes, however my boyfriend was the last person to use my camera before I took the cupcake photos and he had set it to shoot in raw and I didn’t notice which means I can’t get the photos off the camera and have to wait for him to do it. sad! so hopefully soon. until then, here’s a blurry, poorly lit one from my cell phone. hah

The cupcakes on top are my Irish car bomb cupcakes. Chocolate stout cake with Irish cream frosting. This batch is frosted with Bailey’s cream cheese frosting, but I’ve also done (and the original recipe calls for) Bailey’s buttercream.

The cupcakes on the bottom are a vanilla cake that I dyed green and are topped with a lemon buttercream that was deliciously tart and refreshing. I’ll post the recipes for those when I get the photos.

I also plan on posting my berry lemon cheesecake recipe since I know it will be really easy but will end up looking and tasting completely decadent!

I tried a new recipe the other day when I had a request for honey lavender cupcakes. It was a pretty simple recipe and though I was worried that the lavender would end up tasting too perfumey, it didn’t at all. The flavor was light and sweet but not too sweet.

Cupcakes:

1/4 cup softened butter

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup honey

2 eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

handful of lavender

Frosting:

1 stick unsalted butter

1 package cream cheese

1/4 cup honey

powder sugar to taste

lavender to taste

milk to get the right consistency

I found that the honey made the frosting a bit thicker than my usual cream cheese frosting and I ended up thinning it out with some milk. I also crushed some of the lavender and left some whole for the frosting. These cupcakes will need to be refrigerated due to the dairy in the frosting, but if you don’t like cold cake, you could always just keep the frosting in the fridge and frost the cupcakes individually. I didn’t pipe the frosting since I was worried that the lavender might clog the tip so I just spooned the frosting on a few and left the rest bare to frost individually when I wanted to have one. 🙂

It’s true, I simply cannot be patriotic with my buttercream. One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that this gritty sugary mess is called buttercream. It’s not buttery, and rich, and delicious. It’s sickeningly sweet and coats your mouth with a regretful crust of gross. And half the time it’s not even made with butter, but with vegetable shortening. “Vegetable shortening cream” doesn’t quite have the same delicious ring to it does it?

Or at least, that’s how I feel.

My second pet peeve is when bakeries and cupcakeries say they use “buttercream” and I’m convinced it’s not that crusty culprit and get excited to try some new delicious baked goods only to have that first moment of bliss ruined by biting into the cavity inducing grit.

It’s so hard to find good frosting. 😦

This rant is brought on by my recent adventure to a new cupcakery that opened a few doors down from my place of employment. Now I make a pretty mean cupcake if I do say so myself, but I rather enjoy going out and trying a “professional” cupcake from time to time. I was so excited about this place because their website stressed that they topped all their cupcakes with fresh homemade buttercream which made it sound so delicious and enticing. I was wrong.

I walked in to their brand new store, which was beyond adorable, was greeted by fantastic looking cupcakes with their “come-hither” names and promptly bought a half dozen that, oddly enough, seemed to have a pie theme (pumpkin, strawberry cheesecake, lemon meringue…). I couldn’t wait to get them home and stuff my face. I knew as soon as I opened the container and the frosting that had been touching the top didn’t leave a smudge that something was wrong. I gently tapped my finger on one of the dollops and felt the crisp shell of confectioners sugar frosting break beneath my fingertip. *sigh* I had such high hopes for them.

I decided to dig in anyhow as I’d spent $11 on them.

Two of the 6, red velvet and pumpkin pie, were supposed to be frosted with cream cheese frosting. Now I thought I had a pretty good idea about what cream cheese frosting was…but this stuff just barely tasted of cream cheese and had the same consistency and texture of the “buttercream” I’ve never come across that before.

The cake part of the cupcakes were great (except the lemon cake, they used fake lemon flavoring which I can’t stand either. ) but i feel like the “buttercream” they used really ruined the flavor.

So in conclusion, I feel that “american buttercream” ruins a good confection, and bakeries should specify what type of buttercream they use…or at least warn us if it’s the american kind.

Just a few photos of a couple cupcake recipes that Stephanie and I were trying out.

There really aren’t any actual recipes for these as we basically just added different flavorings to some box cupcake mixes.

for the match cupcakes we used some green tea powder from our local asian food market.

for the orange dreamsicle cupcakes we used some orange crush dessert topping. (this stuff is dangerous, I would have squirted it right into my mouth if I were alone) and check it out! they have Cherry Dr. Pepper too!

we also did some strawberry and chocolate malt cupcakes where we simply added fresh strawberry puree and malted milk powder to one and some melted chocolate and malted milk powder to the other.

I made some tasty little cupcakes today that I like to call “Drunken Irish Cupcakes” as they include both Guinness as well as Bailey’s. This idea originally came from some brownies I had made with a co-worker for a staff party some months back. The brownies were Guinness chocolate brownies with a Bailey’s cheesecake swirl on top and they were fantastic!

CAKE:

1 cup Guinness stout

1 cup (2 sticks ) unsalted butter

3/4 cup cocoa powder

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup vanilla yogurt

2 large eggs

DIRECTIONS:

pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

whisk together flour and baking soda.

pour Guinness into small saucepan and add butter. Slowly heat on stove top until butter is melted.

once butter is melted, whisk in cocoa powder and sugar until combined.

combine eggs and yogurt in large bowl and beat with mixer until combined.

slowly add Guinness mixture to eggs and yogurt and beat with mixer.

add in flour mixture and beat until well combined.

fill cake pan or baking cups and bake until toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean.

FROSTING:

7-10 large egg whites

2 cups sugar

Bailey’s irish cream to taste

3 sticks butter (unsalted)

DIRECTIONS:

Place sugar and egg whites in the heat-proof bowl of an electric mixer. Set bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, and whisk until sugar has dissolved and egg whites are hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. Test by rubbing the mixture between your fingers; it should feel completely smooth.
Transfer bowl to mixer stand (or hot pad if using hand mixer). Using the whisk attachment, beat on high speed until mixture has cooled completely and formed stiff and glossy peaks, about 10 minutes.
Add the butter, one piece at a time, and beat until incorporated after each addition. Don’t worry if the buttercream appears curdled after all the butter has been added; it will become smooth again with continued beating. Add Bailey’s, and beat just until combined.
Make sure the cupcakes are fully cooled before frosting as buttercream melts extremely easily!